Riot police enforced a wide security zone early on Thursday around a campsite housing thousands of anti-G-8 protesters, hoping to avoid a repeat of violence that broke out on the opening day of the summit.
An Associated Press television news cameraman said police in full body armour and carrying shields had blocked the main entrance to the camp and closed roads in the town of Stirling, 22km southwest of Gleneagles where the G-8 summit is being held.
Central Scotland police confirmed that officers had placed a ”safety cordon” around the camp, which houses about 5 000 protesters. A police spokesperson said officers were stationed at regular intervals around the perimeter of the camp.
A force statement said officers had been willing to allow peaceful protests. ”However a violent minority who have no interest in peaceful and lawful protest brought widespread disruption to the community of Stirling yesterday [Wednesday] and the force believes that a repeat is planned,” the statement said.
”Police have no plans to enter the site but everyone within there is urged to remain in the camp for the time being in the interests of safety and security,” the statement added.
On Wednesday, more than 100 activists, many clad in black and covering their faces with bandanas and wearing hoods, streamed out of the makeshift campsite, and threw rocks, smashed the windscreens of parked cars and clashed with police in Stirling. They attempted to blockade one of the main approach roads to the summit venue causing widespread traffic disruption.
Police said some officers were injured, and eight received hospital treatment on Wednesday.
Anti-G-8 campaigners have vowed to disrupt the summit, taking place amid tight security at the luxurious Gleneagles hotel in rural Scotland.
The force statement said anyone wanting to leave the camp site ”with no intention of causing disorder” would be allowed to, ”with the assistance of police officers”.
A police spokesperson said officers were in dialogue with the protesters about the security operation and the scene was calm.
‘You have been very badly brought up’
Already divided by personal squabbles and by the sometimes bloody historical rivalries of their countries, French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair hardly needed to add problems to their relationship.
But their jousting to win the 2012 Olympics and a Chirac jibe over British food have made for three fraught days of cohabitation at the Gleneagles hotel.
Chirac’s style, a mixture of avuncular and presidential aloofness, has long clashed with that of Blair, who favours the informal and sincere.
In October 2002, the septugenarian French head of state exploded at Blair after the youthful British prime minister told him that failure to reform European farm subsidies fuelled starvation in Africa.
”You have been very badly brought up,” Blair was told.
Today Chirac’s star seems to be on the wane, Blair’s in the ascendant.
Chirac lost heavily in regional elections in 2004 and suffered a fiasco when electors rejected the proposed European Union Constitution in May, placing him at risk of becoming a lame-duck president for the next two years.
Blair was easily re-elected in May and a few weeks later was spared the divisiveness of a British referendum on the EU because of the outcome of the French vote. Further strengthening his clout, he took the helm of the EU presidency on July 1, in addition to that of the G8.
As Blair luxuriated in the media spotlight on Wednesday after London won the Olympics battle, Chirac swallowed his disappointment, declaring with a smile on his arrival at Glasgow that he offered his ”warm personal congratulations” to the winners and to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.
But analysts said there was a possibility that Chirac might play a joker’s card.
”He’s a temperamental guy, plus he’s got big problems back home, plus he’s a G8 veteran,” John Kirton of the G8 Research Group, an analytical unit of the University of Toronto in Canada, said in Gleneagles.
Kirton said Chirac’s opportunity could come with climate change, the issue where Blair is at his weakest.
Green campaigners say a draft communique and ”plan of action” on global warming has been watered down by US opposition, essentially gutting Blair’s vow that the G8 would take strides to help curb greenhouse gases.
”Chirac faces the temptation of playing to the folks back home on Europe and climate change. He might play the role of Kyoto [Protocol] fundamentalist and that could make it more difficult to get a consensus.”
One of the summit’s indirect goals is to coax the United States into the international fold on climate change — an approach that President George Bush says must be voluntary, as opposed to the binding commitments enshrined in Kyoto.
As a result, the UN’s climate pact in the summit documents is almost absent from the draft summit documents, and the tone is on a technological fix for a looming crisis.
”If he [Chirac] really wanted to screw up Tony, he could demand a full-blown commitment on the Kyoto Protocol, and then you’d have the prospect of the G8 leaders fighting it out over adjectives,” said Kirton.
Blair and Chirac usually overcome their differences, and on the key issues of African aid and climate change see eye to eye.
But Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics (LSE) told the BBC that Chirac ”will attempt to embarrass Tony Blair in every way he can think of … He will try to isolate the UK and maximise the distance between the UK and the US. He won’t be taking any hostages.”
‘Act with courage’
Meanwhile. a global wave of high-profile concerts for the poor of Africa climaxed on Wednesday when 60 000 people heard Nelson Mandela tell the G8 summit that the world was ”hungry for action”.
In a recorded television appearance before Western and African musicians performing live in Edinburgh, the former South African president stirred the crowd with his heartfelt plea to the G8 leaders in Gleneagles, northwest of here.
”I say to all those [G8] leaders: ‘Don’t look the other way. Don’t hesitate. Recognise that the world is hungry for action, not words. Act with courage,” Mandela said on a giant screen on a flag-draped stage at a rugby stadium.
He reminded the leaders that millions of people were ”trapped in the prison of poverty” and it was ”time to set them free”.
At first hushed by the former South African leader’s appearance, the crowd later erupted into roaring cheers, many waving white-and-blue Scottish flags or red-and-white English flags.
Irish rock star Bono and Scottish singer Annie Lennox performed with Youssou N’Dour and other African artists from Peter Gabriel’s Womad Organisation, with additional appearances by Hollywood actors George Clooney and Susan Sarandon.
Torrential rain early on in the concert did not dampen a generally festive mood, as the crowd danced and sang along with the stars while some expressed euphoria in their common cause against poverty.
The mood turned sombre at times when images of poverty-stricken and sick Africans appeared on stadium screens.
Many of the spectators also doubted they would have much impact on the summit, though they vowed to continue doing their bit against poverty.
Asked if he felt it was really the last push, Jimmy Connor, who was wearing a kilt and proud of the strong Scottish turnout, replied that the people of the world would have to keep up the pressure for many more years.
”I think it’s going to go on for a long time,” said Connor.
”I think they’re going to give lots of aid but I don’t think they will ever make a level playing field for trade,” Connor said.
He singled out French President Jacques Chirac’s refusal to negotiate away the generous European Union farm subsidies that benefit French and other European farmers but which make it difficult for African farmers to compete.
On the hopeful side, Connor said a popular movement that began with Live Aid 20 years ago was only growing stronger.
He and his wife Ruth, who have a baby boy with a heart condition, said the concert made them emotional because they realised that their child could survive with Scotland’s health care system, while African children just died.
Shanna Goodhur, a dark-haired and brown-eyed young Scotswoman, also doubted the concert would make much difference but she thought the cause was worthwhile.
Nor did she think the concert was overshadowed by the massive series of concerts that took place on Saturday in London, Cornwall, Philadelphia, Johannesburg, Moscow, Rome, Berlin, Paris, Toronto and Tokyo.
”This is not a letdown because the G8 is happening right now at Gleneagles,” she said.
Other performers were Scottish bands Wet Wet Wet, Texas and Snow Patrol. The line-up also included jazz pianist Jamie Cullum, pop chanteuse Natasha Bedingfield, McFly, Sugababes, The Thrills, Embrace and Ronan Keating.
Ex-Boomtown Rat Bob Geldof, who organised the Live 8 concerts, sang a Scottish folk song and former Ultravox frontman Midge Ure belted out his 1981 hit Vienna, with Izzard accompanying him on piano. – Sapa-AFP